


Lions of the Rock

by catherineflowers



Series: The Hippie and the Hitchhiker [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Breathplay, Class Issues, Cute Kids, F/M, Family Planning, Firefighter!Brienne, Gentle mockery of hippie culture, Hippie!Jaime, Pod is a dog, white person with locs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:22:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27305533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: Five years after the events in "Sword of the Morning", Jaime, Brienne and their family face a new challenge together.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: The Hippie and the Hitchhiker [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900624
Comments: 55
Kudos: 83





	1. The Intrusion

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Shade of the Evening](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864702/chapters/62844997) and [Sword of the Morning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26173036/chapters/63686938), which should probably be read first!

It began on the first day of the new moon.

Jaime noticed a couple of women watching him in the park as he pushed Dayne and Cub on the swings. They’d been at the party, too – the one he’d taken the boys to with Dayne’s schoolfriends in that hideous soft play place in the city.

Dayne had come out sugared up to the eyeballs, and one of these two women had spoken to Jaime then – the taller one, the Westerosi. She’d commiserated about the junk food and the over-excitement. They’d exchanged a few pleasantries, and suddenly, Jaime had been aware that she was looking at him. Like _really_ looking at him, her eyes studying him and her brow furrowed as if she knew him and was trying to place where from.

Jaime had made excuses and moved quickly away, keeping his head down.

Now there were two of them goggling at him in the park, looking at his face, his missing hand. Whispering together. He tried to keep his back to them, but when Cub ran from the swings to the slide, he had to turn towards the women to catch him, and he could swear that one of them took a picture with her phone.

Jaime bundled Dayne into Genna and got the hells out of there.

That first day, he didn’t tell Brienne.

It didn’t seem like too big a deal – he’d been paranoid about people watching him before. They’d laughed about it, in fact, when it just turned out that they were undercover security guards, or women who thought he was hot.

And Brienne was busy when they got home, rushing around getting ready for the gym before she went to work. Cub, crotchety, tired and over-stimulated, clung to her leg as she tried to put her leggings on.

“Cub, seriously!” she scolded him.

“What’s the matter?” Jaime asked.

“I overslept! Meris is picking me up in about ten minutes.”

“Oh, damn.”

“I thought you would be back earlier than this.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. The party went on much longer than I thought it would – it wasn’t just soft play, they had food, and then they did all these … _games_!”

Brienne raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“It was so weird. They had a circle of chairs and made all the kids run around while they played music. Then they stopped the music, and the kids had to sit on a chair, only –”

“There wasn’t enough chairs?”

“Yeah! What kind of –”

“That’s Musical Chairs.”

“Oh. You’ve seen it?”

Brienne had that look on her face – the one she wore whenever she realised how weird Jaime’s childhood had been. As their boys grew older, this was becoming more and more apparent.

In the five years since they had become parents, Brienne had been variously amused and horrified to learn that her husband had never baked fairy cakes, never played with a yo-yo. Never built a den. Never skimmed stones or played Pooh Sticks. Jaime couldn’t even ride a bike.

“All right, all right … so I’ve never been to a kids’ party!” he laughed. “Unless you count after-recital soirées?”

Brienne laughed too. Shook her head. “I really don’t! Seriously ... no musical chairs? Never?”

“No!”

“Even _I_ got invited to parties. Though probably because all the mums were shagging my dad.”

“It wasn’t that I wasn’t invited. No one at the conservatory _had_ parties. By the time I was Dayne’s age, I was rehearsing eight hours a day. Musical theory, studying the great composers. All that fun stuff.”

Brienne shook her head.

“I’m doing it all now, with our kids. Though to be honest, Dayne really wasn’t into the musical chairs all that much either.”

“It can be a little bit cutthroat.”

Dayne was something of a sensitive soul. Much more at home in the company of Podrick and the family’s two cats Honour and Glory than he was with his schoolfriends. Privately, Jaime doubted the wisdom of Brienne’s decision to send him to school at all – so many in Jaime’s circle home-educated their children, and it seemed to be a much more child-centred lifestyle. Probably something that would suit Dayne.

Brienne threw her t-shirt on over her head and grabbed her gym bag. Shoved her feet in her trainers and pecked a kiss to Jaime’s lips.

“See you later,” she smiled, and she was off. Jaime and Cub waved goodbye to mummy through the window, watching her jog down the beach to the spot where her friend and work colleague Meris picked her up.

Jaime drew the blinds and went to cook some dinner.

Dayne was already sat at the table, pushing his long golden curls out of his eyes impatiently as he tried to concentrate on what he was crayoning. It looked to Jaime like a superhero, but of course, he had no clue which one. Comic books and cartoons were yet more things he’d missed out on as a child.

He plonked Cub into his highchair – at two years old he was getting a little big for it really, but it meant he could stay out of mischief while Jaime cooked, and he could see what was going on, too. He was a nosy kind of kid.

But of course, it wasn’t as simple as just cooking dinner. The breakfast plates Jaime hadn’t had time to deal with before they left that morning were still on the table, and the pans from last night’s dinner were piled on the cooker.

But the dishwasher was full and needed unstacking first, and the bin they used to scrape their compostable food scraps into was also full. But the bin bag split as Jaime was lifting it out, because biodegradable bags weren’t the sturdiest, so then he had to pick up four-day-old spaghetti and rice and half a mouldy bread roll from the floor and find the spray cleaner, which was empty. He’d bought more, earlier in the week, but hadn’t Brienne used it to scrub the tiles in the shower?

He found it on a shelf in the bathroom, but damn, the nozzle was stiff to turn out of the childlock position. Even wedged between his knees, it was near impossible, and he found himself sweating and cursing his single hand.

He ended up using the antibacterial wipes that he didn’t like much because they were only single-use, but he couldn’t exactly leave the stain until Brienne got home, not with two kids, a dog and two cats wandering around.

He finally got the bin outside to the composter – but as he opened the door, both cats flew inside. Both looked half-wild, their eyes almost full black and their fur sticking up on end — no doubt some territorial dispute with the numerous strays on the beach.

Jaime fed them both, and Podrick too, when he came wandering in at the sound of food hitting bowls.

He emptied the dishwasher, noticing that the cutlery drawer was full of crumbs and needed cleaning out, and that several of the plates had food still stuck to them and would need to go back in. The dishwasher filter also needed cleaning, and the door seals wiping out, but that would have to wait until next time.

Now Cub was bored and crying to get down – doubtless hungry, too. Dayne was chattering away about what he was writing, trying to work out how to spell the name of his superhero by sounding each letter out as he’d been taught at school. Asking for Jaime’s help, and then his approval as he painstakingly wrote each letter out.

Jaime dug around in the fridge – the prawns he had planned to eat tonight had gone past their date, and Brienne must have used the chicken when she got in from work yesterday. There were pies, but they took forty minutes, and they were all too hungry to wait that long. There were some Qarthian blood sausages, but it seemed a shame to split a pack up without Brienne there, and usually, Cub wouldn’t eat them anyway.

Jaime shoved a banana at the complaining Cub and piled the dirty stuff in the dishwasher. He had a few scraps – some peas, some leftover carrots – he could make a quick rice dish out of that if he was creative.

His chopping of the carrots was interrupted twice by Cub, and then Dayne, both wanting drinks, and then again by a fight between the cats. Dayne put some music on, some saccharine, chirpy kids’ thing that repeated itself endlessly. He and Cub found it hilarious, and Cub cried to get down from the highchair so he could dance with his brother.

But then, of course, Dayne wasn’t happy because Cub did the dance wrong, and because he touched him on the shoulder as he swang his arms about and then _again_ because he was looking at him. So Jaime turned the song off and yelled at them both and then felt shitty about the yelling because Dayne cried. He compensated by faking interest in the superhero for ten minutes while Dayne explained every nuance of every iteration that the hero’s super suit had been through since inception.

It was getting perilously close to bedtime by the time dinner was ready, and Cub wasn’t keen on the food anyway. He spat every carrot out and ate around the peas. He managed a few spoonfuls of rice at most.

Mostly, Jaime suspected, the poor kid was tired. He’d had a cold last week and needed to catch up on his sleep. He rushed through the bedtime routine, foregoing baths tonight. He couldn’t find Cub’s pyjamas – had he wet them last night? Had he just taken them off and stuffed them somewhere? This morning had been a bit of a mad rush.

Jaime ended up tumble drying some that were still damp from the wash last night, chasing Cub around the house to get him in his nappy, reminding Dayne to brush his teeth and then telling him to do it again when he emerged from the bathroom after less than thirty seconds.

He turned the lamps on and made the beds – another thing he hadn’t got around to today, but they’d been busy. He found the requisite cuddly toys and put the TV on – the boys always watched some videos of bedtime stories to fall asleep.

Their bedroom was a mess – it seemed Cub had upended the Lego at some point, and of course, it had gone everywhere, mostly wherever Jaime wanted to stand.

He folded their clothes and put them in the washbasket. He picked up a few toys, but mostly, he just wanted a cup of tea, so he kissed his boys goodnight and tucked them in. Cub was already dozing in his toddler bed, widthways across his mattress with his thumb in his mouth.

He looked so beautiful, the wild blond hair he had inherited from Brienne a mess on his pillow. That was the reason they had nicknamed him Cub – he’d been born with a mop of unruly hair that stuck up in every direction, like a little lion. Thus, the very sensibly-named Gerion Endrew O’Tarth had become known as Cub.

Jaime moved to the other bed, where dear little Dayne lay, his serious face fixed on the TV. The story was about a knight, a fairy and an enchanted sword, not a fairy tale Jaime had ever heard, but then fairy tales hadn’t really been a feature of his childhood, either.

Dayne was beautiful, too, though he looked nothing like Jaime had predicted he would. Despite the abundance of golden curls, Dayne’s looks mostly favoured his mother, though he had green eyes. He had no freckles on his nose at all, though. So much for that Shade-dream he’d had all those years ago.

“Goodnight, sweetling,” Jaime whispered, pressing a kiss to Dayne’s high forehead.

Dayne put his arms around his father’s neck. Rubbed his nose into his locs the way he’d always done even as a small baby.

“I a thousand times love you forever, daddy,” he whispered.

Jaime melted. Squeezed his son even harder. “I a thousand times love you forever, too, Dayne. Sleep well.”

He kissed him again and left the room, leaving the door open a little so he could hear if either of them woke.

He got as far as filling the kettle before Dayne got up, followed a few moments later by an asleep-on-his feet Cub, both wanting drinks.

Jaime sent them back to bed with cups of water and finally got his tea made. It was a blend of Qarthian teas mixed with Shade of the Evening essence – all of the relaxing properties without any of the hallucinogenic ones. He shoved Podrick off the sofa where he wasn’t supposed to sleep, and lay out on it himself.

That was when he thought he heard someone outside.

At first, it was a couple of footsteps on the verandah, the sound of shuffling feet. Then something bumped into the bins. Podrick lifted his head from his paws. Whined.

Jaime sat up. Listened intently. A little creeped out.

That was the downside of living here, he supposed. They were quite far off the beaten track, but not really far enough to deter a determined drunk wandering down the beach from the city. It wouldn't be the first time they had found some utterly wrecked tourist passed out by their front door.

He got up and flipped on the outside lights. They were powerful and bright – usually, that would be enough to make a drunk turn tail and run. Well, that and the sight of Podrick.

He opened the shutters over the door and peered out. He saw no one, and nothing, not even the bins looked to be disturbed. He motioned to Podrick to join him at the door to add an air of menace, but the Leonberger had put his head back on his paws and barely cracked an eye at Jaime’s request.

Still, it didn’t look as though anything was amiss, so Jaime switched off the lights and closed the shutters again.

Both cats had taken the opportunity to steal the sofa now, so Jaime chugged his tea, said fuck-it to the state of the kitchen, and went to bed. After all, it was quite likely that he’d be joined by Cub at some point during the night, and there would be no chance of peaceful sleep after that.

In the event of it, it was Brienne who woke him first.

She climbed into bed in her t-shirt and knickers just before dawn around four am. It was still dark, but she seemed quite awake. She pressed a kiss to his mouth that tasted like toothpaste.

“Hi, baby,” he muttered. Pressed a sleepy kiss of his own into the hollow of her neck. “Did you have a good night? No callouts?”

She shook her head. “Pretty boring night, really. Played cards and had a planking contest with Meris.”

Jaime opened his eyes. “Good.” He worried a lot when Brienne got called out. She was well-trained and good at her job, but the thought of her heading into a burning building, even to save lives, scared the shit out of him.

She kissed him again. Grabbed his hand and put it on her breast. Moaned softly as he circled his thumb over her nipple.

Mmmm … Brienne felt nice. Warm and big and cosy. So cosy …

“Are you asleep?”

“Huh?” Jaime snapped awake. His hand was still on her breast, but he’d stopped moving his thumb. “What?”

“I’ve got my hand on your cock, and you’re falling asleep?!”

Oh – so she did. “It – it’s the middle of the night. And I’ve had Cub awake a lot recently.”

“We haven’t made love in two weeks,” she complained. “I thought we were supposed to be trying for a baby.”

Two weeks? Had it really been so long? Thinking about it, Jaime supposed it could have been – what with Brienne’s period, her change in shifts, Cub having a cold and Dayne having bad dreams.

She sighed. Let go of Jaime’s cock. “Look, if you don’t want to –”

“No, no – I want to. I’m sorry. I – I’m just tired. Not awake.”

“Just a quickie?”

Jaime nodded. “Before we get disturbed by Cub.”

He pulled himself out of the dangerously warm embrace of his pillow. Threw himself into kissing Brienne, wishing he could risk a trip to the bathroom to clean his teeth but not wanting Dayne or Cub to wake.

Despite his grogginess, his cock quickly responded to her touch, to her nearness. Her body was taut and strong against his, gym-fresh and defined from her planking game with her friend. Jaime loved the way she dragged him on top of her, there was just enough force in it to make him feel soft and small and … _overpowered_. She kissed him hard, and her hands groped possessively over his back, his arse, his cock.

He was _hers._

“Love you,” she breathed into his mouth between kisses.

“Love you, too,” he replied. He slid his hand between them, over Brienne’s belly and down between her legs. She arched her neck and closed her eyes and hummed under her breath. He could feel how wet she was even through her knickers.

He pulled her knickers down. She kicked them off. Pulled the sheets over them both in case they had a little visitor or two.

He got on top and fumbled about a bit with his cock, until he had his angle right. It was dark and stuffy under the covers, and he had to bite his lip to stifle his groan as he slid inside her.

It had been _ages_ , he realised, far too long – his cock had all but forgotten what sex felt like!

But now … oh. It felt _great_. Jaime’s cock throbbed with every thrust, his balls felt swollen and tight all at once, warmth radiated from the base of his cock right down to his toes. Gods, they should do this more often.

She had him cradled in her arms and legs, his sweaty forehead pressed to the shoulder of her t-shirt, her thighs tight on his hips. She had her hands on his lower back, urging his arse faster, and harder, and she whispered words of encouragement, half loving and half completely filthy.

“Fuck, I’m going to come,” he grunted.

Everything went dark. Jaime was tumbled up in the sensation, that urgent, rising surge and then the crashing relief as all the sweet, sweet tension was released. Thrusting in deep. Groaning into her neck.

Afterwards, he was wrecked. Collapsed. Useless. Weak as a kitten, blindly seeking her mouth with his. She kissed him. He apologised.

“What for?” she whispered.

“I’ll go down on you. Just give me a minute, and I’ll –”

“It’s okay.”

“No, I – that was _quick_.”

“It’s late. Really late. You’re tired, and so am I. I just thought I might be ovulating, so …”

“Are you sure?”

“At least we can say we made an effort.”

He let out a huff of laughter against her lips. Kissed her again and withdrew his cock with a wince. He groped around his bedside for the baby wipes. They cleaned themselves side-by-side on the bed in silence, both of them throwing the used wipes across the room – both missing because the bin was full.

Brienne pulled her knickers on and lay back with her knees hugged to her chest, keeping her pelvis tilted to give herself the best chance of conception. Jaime slapped his pillow a couple of times, turned it over and nestled into the cool side.

“Oh, one of the cats has puked on the rug,” Brienne said just as he closed his eyes.

“What? Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“I folded it over, so no one steps in it, but I didn’t want to get all the cleaning stuff out and risk waking the kids.”

“Yeah. No – just leave it. I’ll clean it in the morning. Or chuck it away and buy another one.”

She let out a snort of laughter. “I bet it was Glory. I caught her gorging herself on Podrick’s food again.”

“Bloody cat eats like a dustbin.”

“Cub was helping her. He won’t eat sausages, or mushrooms, or peas or carrots or anything made from a potato, but dog food? Straight in there.”

“Gods, that child is half-feral!” Jaime exclaimed. He reached out and put his hand on Brienne’s belly. “Let’s hope number three is a little more civilised.”

She smiled and threaded her fingers with his. Lay down on her pillow and reached for his face with her other hand. Stroked his cheek with her thumb. It felt good, and he was so sleepy. He closed his eyes.

“We must be mad,” Brienne said after a moment.

Jaime shrugged. Opened his eyes again. “Ah, what’s one more in the mix?”

“Another pregnancy, more morning sickness … another birth. Just when my body feels like my own again.”

“You can get that back.”

She nodded, but her eyes were uncertain. “Let’s try until I’m forty. If it hasn’t happened by then, we’ll stop.”

“That’s what … seven months? I don’t think it will take us that long.”

“It might if we only have sex once a fortnight.”

“We’ll try to do better,” Jaime said around a yawn. “We need to make time.”

He dozed again, soothed by the soft touch of Brienne’s fingers in his grey-streaked beard.

“Daddy? Daddy, wake up.”

A little thumb, on one of his eyelids. Pulling it open.

“What? What’s the matter?”

Jaime blinked himself awake. Both boys were there in front of him, in pyjamas, their long hair sleep-mussed, their faces worried.

Brienne was fast asleep beside him, sprawled on her back snoring.

It was 6.14am. He’d been asleep about two hours.

“What’s going on?” he asked, noting the worried expression on Dayne’s face.

“Cub opened the curtains,” Dayne grassed. Cub was forbidden from touching curtains after he pulled on them so hard he pulled a curtain pole down.

“Oh, Cub,” Jaime said. “You know you shouldn’t be –”

“No, daddy,” Dayne interrupted. “There’s a man outside.”

“A what? What man?” Jaime was up now, springing naked out of bed. “Is he on the beach?”

“No, daddy. He’s looking through the window.”

“What the – ? Stay with mummy, okay?”

Dayne nodded. Clambered into bed and shrank next to Brienne.

“You too, Cub,” Jaime warned.

Jaime tiptoed out of the bedroom, into the hallway. The house was quiet – even Podrick and the cats were asleep. He leaned around the door and peered into the boys’ room.

One of the curtains was open, and through the window, there was blue sky, white sand, blue sea. No one around, at least not on this side of the house.

Jaime edged closer to the window and peered out.

There were footprints in the sand. Man-size ones that went right up to the window. Right up close.

The boys had been right.

Jaime grabbed a weapon. It was a stone fertility charm in the shape of an erect penis that Mirri Maz Duur had given them when she found out they were trying for Cub. They kept it on a shelf in the hallway, just outside the bedroom, and it had certainly done the job back then.

More importantly now, it was heavy.

Jaime crept into the living room. The blinds were still drawn, and the rug folded over on itself where Brienne had covered the cat puke. He tiptoed through into the kitchen.

He could hear voices outside now—two men, talking to each other, too faint to make out what they were saying.

He threw the front door open.

There were two men – two Westerosi, one cueball-bald, in his fifties with his hands folded inside the sleeves of his muu-muu and the other much younger, little more than a child. He had a camera around his neck.

“What are you, some sort of perverts?” Jaime yelled. “What the fuck are you doing looking at my kids through the window?”

The bald one squinted at him. The kid raised his camera.

“Jaime Lannister!” exclaimed the bald man. “Good gods, it _is_ you!”

Jaime flinched. The kid started taking photographs. Photographs of Jaime – naked. “Who – who are you?” he stuttered.

“Mr Varys,” the bald man oiled. He held out a business card. “I’m Qarthian correspondent for _The Daily Whisperer_.”

A well-known Westerosi tabloid rag.

“We had a tip yesterday that you were living out here, hermit-style. Do you have any comment on that, Jaime?”

Jaime froze. It was as if an icy hand had gripped his balls. Paralysed him.

The kid kept taking photos. Varys kept talking. Jaime didn’t hear what he was saying.

“Get out of here!” he yelled, finally finding his voice. “Go! Now!” He threw the fertility penis at Varys. The bald man ducked, and it sailed over his head.

“There’s no need to be hostile, Jaime. Don’t you think you owe it to your fans to let them know what’s going on with you?”

Jaime didn’t answer. He ran back into the house. Slammed the door. Pulled the shutters.


	2. The Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The press have found Jaime. How will they deal with what's next?

The pictures were in the paper the next day, and by lunchtime, there was quite a crowd of journalists on the beach.

Jaime had been called “wild-eyed”, “hysterical” and “reclusive”. He’d been accused of ranting and attacking the journalist while stark naked. They speculated that he had joined a cult. There were quotes from “a local friend” saying they feared for his mental state.

In short, they’d made him look like a madman—a figure of fun.

The day after that, they knew all about Brienne, too. They’d tracked down her father, who had most helpfully given an interview where he said they didn’t see each other that often, and even found that terrible photo of her on the website of Goodwin’s gym.

Speculation was rife about how they might have met, about who had initiated who into the bizarre naked love cult that Jaime was so clearly involved with. Whether it was Brienne’s fault that Jaime didn’t play the violin any more. Whether she was “pushy” or “controlling” or the “mother figure he’d always needed”. Never mind that she was over ten years younger than him.

Articles were written about why handsome men married masculine women.

So, of course, as the next few days passed, people crawled out of the woodwork to talk to the press, wanting money or their fifteen seconds, Brienne didn’t know.

Her ex-boss Sansa Stark said she remembered very little of Brienne, other than the fact she wasn’t a team player and that she always put her personal life first. Her ex-tenant Roose Bolton remembered far too much.

He was only too happy to fill the nation in on things he’d overheard when they’d all lived together. Sex things, mostly, which the right-wing papers wrinkled their noses at while poring over every lascivious detail. How Jaime had liked to walk around naked, how he’d eaten food out of his fridge.

The narrative that emerged, mostly thanks to Roose, was that Brienne was a ruthless gold-digger who had gone abroad looking to land herself a rich husband. That since she had married Jaime, she had forgotten all her old friends and family. That she was cold and uncaring,

It was bollocks, of course it was. But reading it, the lie of it, made Jaime literally cry. He holed up in the bedroom for most of that morning, wrapped in a blanket and sobbing like his heart was broken.

Brienne took Dayne to school by herself, resolutely ignoring the pack as she walked up the bank to get into Genna. She gripped Dayne’s little hand as he asked question after question about what was going on. Not really having the answers for him.

When she got back, Jaime was still upset. He only stopped crying when Cub came in, worried and trying to hug his dad, offering him various cuddly toys to cheer him up.

It was impossible to stay sad around their irrepressible Cub.

“It will get better,” Brienne whispered as she held him and Cub tight. “You know what news is like. In a few days, something will happen, or some other celebrity will do something, and we’ll be forgotten.”

“It’s _over,_ though, Brienne. They found me, they all _know_.”

“Know what?” Brienne asked.

He didn’t answer. “There might not be a press pack camped outside in a week or so, but it won’t be the same. Anyone anywhere could have read those stories, anyone anywhere could recognise me. All of our peace, our privacy, our freedom... It’s _gone_.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do. _I_ do. I’ve lived so much of my adult life like this. Having to think about what I wear, where I go, what stories people might write. When I was part of it, when I had albums to promote, hells... When it was just _me,_ it was difficult enough. But what have our boys done to deserve this?”

“They don’t understand any of this.”

“I wanted to keep it that way, too.”

“Perhaps that wasn’t realistic. ”

“I managed nearly a decade undiscovered. And ... how do you think Dayne and Cub will feel, reading that stuff? That you only married me for my money, that you abandoned your friends and family because you’re too rich for them now.”

Brienne swallowed. “I would like to think they would know that’s not true.”

“It hurts, though, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does. But the boys know we still see people back in Westeros. We see my dad twice a year, and … we make calls all the time. Yeah, we’ve drifted away from some people, but … that’s life.”

“Roose _bastard_ Bolton!” Jaime swore.

“He was never our friend, Jaime. You know that.” Indeed, things had ended even more sourly than they had begun with Roose – they’d ended up evicting him shortly after Dayne was born.

“If I had two hands I’d wring his fucking neck.”

“Dayne and Cub have had a good start in life, Jaime; I’d like to think we’ve been good parents. Nothing they read in a newspaper is going to change that.”

“ _Everything_ is going to change.”

“Perhaps it won’t.”

“It is. You don’t know. People will see my photo in the paper, and now they’ll recognise me in the street. They’ll know who I am.”

“They might not. You look very different to how you did back then.”

“That was one thing I had going for me before. Now …”

“Well … all right. But does it matter? Really?”

“Yes! Of course it does! Everyone will be looking at us everywhere we go. The Divine Lannister … he can’t even scratch his balls in public, can’t buy junk food, can’t have a disagreement with his wife without it being photographed on someone’s fucking phone and discussed in the papers the next day!”

“We don’t have disagreements in public.”

“I meant Lysa. We had a very small argument in a restaurant once about something really trivial, and there was speculation for days about whether or not I was a capricious, abusive diva.”

“Oh.” Privately, Brienne wondered just how trivial that argument had seemed from the outside. Jaime did have a hot temper, and if she was honest, he could be a bit of a diva sometimes, too.

“People who know us here will change, too” Jaime continued. “Our friends.”

“Jaime, they’re our _friends_.”

“It doesn’t matter. From now on, we’ll constantly wonder if they’re leaking shit from our social media, or if they’re being paid to keep tabs on us.”

“People do that?”

“Yes! Everyone is a treacherous snake, and if they’re not, then you have to spend half your life suspecting they are, just in case. Trying to work out where those photos of your arse at the gym came from or how there’s a wall of photographers waiting every time you step out of a club.”

“We don’t go to clubs.”

“No, we don’t. Now, they’ll be at will be Dayne’s school and on the beach when we’re taking the dog for a walk. It will be your trips to the supermarket and coming out of work.”

“That all sounds far too boring to be newsworthy.”

Jaime grunted. “You’ll see.”

Brienne sighed. “Maybe I will. But … honestly, who would want to read about our lives, Jaime? You’re not married to an opera singer any more, you don’t go to glamourous parties and hang out with the beautiful elite. There’s not going to be reporters hanging around waiting for news of how you cleaned the bins out and picked up dog shit.”

“They’re out there now, aren’t they? Taking photographs every time we breathe on one of the curtains.”

“Yes, but –”

“I know how this works, Brienne. I’ve been dealing with it since I was seventeen. If we’re so boring, how come I made the fucking front page on two papers?”

“Because you ran out naked and threw a stone dildo at a journalist! Gods, Jaime –”

“Oh, so this is my fault?”

“Don’t be –”

“You think I’m courting this? You think I enjoy it? Those motherfuckers were looking through our window, Brienne! At our _kids_!”

“And you gave them something to write about.”

“That’s how you feel about it, is it?”

Brienne took a deep breath. “No. Of course not. It’s not your fault, and yes, before you start, you _can_ wear whatever you want on your own property, including nothing. But … it didn’t help, Jaime. You played right into their hands.”

“So you’re my PR manager now, are you? Maybe you should talk to Tyrion, give him some pointers.”

She held up her hands. “Look, let’s not argue about this. It is what it is – we knew it might happen one day, and now it has. I have to get ready.”

“For what?”

“We need groceries. Podrick needs walking, and Dayne will need picking up from school. And then I have to go to work.”

“You’re still going to work?”

“Life has to go on, doesn’t it? I can’t let the crew down because of a few reporters.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“What you always do. Feed the kids. Put them to bed. Tidy the house. We need to keep things as normal as we can until this blows over.”

Jaime scoffed. “Things are not normal, Brienne. And they’re not going to blow over, either.”

“Well, we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

He didn’t reply, just sat there with a sour face on, so Brienne let him sulk and went to find her work gear. Her trousers were still slightly damp from the wash, so … fuck it. She pulled a pair of shorts on and went outside to hang them on the line.

There was, of course, a barrage of clicking shutters and shouted questions, some of which were less than polite, but Brienne ignored them all. She hung her trousers out to dry, picked up a few dog toys and one of Cub’s shoes and went back into her house. Fuck them all.

Jaime was still in a bad mood in the bedroom, so she ignored him, too.

She stopped Cub from drawing on the wall with his crayons and managed to get a nappy and some clothes onto him. Brushed out his tangle of blonde hair and tied it back. Went to the toilet only to come back and find he’d ripped the invisibobble from his hair and it was wild and loose again.

Fuck it.

She put a cap on his head to cover his face as best she could, picked him up and left.

Of course, they were hounded the whole way up the beach to Genna once again, and a few times she thought she spotted a familiar face in a car as she drove into the city to the supermarket.

There was definitely someone following her around the supermarket, and several people stared and muttered to each other as she passed.

It wasn’t an unusual thing for Brienne, to be stared at, but Jaime was right, this definitely felt _different._ More pointed, more intrusive.

Her looks and her height had always attracted stares and curiosity, but this was the first time she had felt it was something more than superficial. That all these people thought they knew her, knew what she was like, knew how she raised her family and why she was with her husband.

It didn’t help that while she was distracted, Cub had swiped a potato from the vegetable display and had taken a bite out of it. Completely raw.

Gods, that would certainly be newsworthy. Would she see tomorrow what a terrible mother she was, letting her son steal and eat raw potatoes? Would it be discussed as evidence that she and Jaime lived a bizarre, oddball cult-like existence out here? Was potato-eating just the start of it?

Brienne forced herself to take a deep breath. So what if they did? None of it was true. What did it matter?

So she resolutely ignored them all as she drove home again, and while she unpacked the shopping from Genna. Cub ran around on the beach as she took the bags to the house. Photographers photographed them both.

Brienne went indoors. Put the shopping away in the fridge and the cupboards. Folded some of the laundry. Gave Cub a snack in his high chair and cleaned up when he spilled his drink.

Jaime stayed in the bedroom. She could see him through the open door – he was reclined on the bed, playing with his phone.

She let Cub out of his highchair and sent him through to Jaime, calling out that she was going to collect Dayne from school. Jaime didn’t answer.

Fuck him, then.

He was morose for the rest of the day, barely speaking, mumbling when he did. Brienne ignored him as best she could – that usually worked quite well when Jaime sulked at her. But after several hours and being chased up the beach by photographers as she walked Podrick, it began to wear pretty thin. She needed a break.

She called Meris – asking if she wanted to go to the gym. Meris agreed, but she sounded a little bit odd on the phone, a little quiet. She was normally not the most talkative of people anyway, but now she was positively monosyllabic.

She collected Brienne as she always did, though, and she didn’t seem surprised to see Brienne pursued by the paparazzi pack.

“You read the papers, yeah?” Brienne asked after a few minutes of driving in silence.

Meris nodded. Of course she did – she was Westerosi too, though she’d been here a lot longer than Jaime or Brienne. Probably she would keep up with Westerosi news.

“My mum likes your husband’s music,” she said with a shrug. Meris lived with her elderly mother in one of the more upmarket suburbs of Qarth. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognise him.”

The locs had been a good disguise, Brienne thought. “It’s … it’s a bit of a nightmare at the moment.”

“It must be.”

“They might be following us right now.”

“Yeah. I think that silver car?” Meris jerked her head in the direction of the rear windscreen. “Maybe the black one, too.”

They lapsed into silence once more – Brienne really not knowing what to say. Perhaps it would have been good to have a friend she could lean on right now, someone other than Jaime she could talk to, someone she could ask advice from, and who knew her well enough to offer support.

It wasn’t really like that.

Brienne and Meris had an odd sort of friendship compared to most, she supposed. It wasn’t one where they confided in each other, or talked about anything personal beyond the most mundane of things. They were insanely competitive in the gym, and at fire training, but compared to the way most women’s friendships seemed …

Neither of them knew how to do that. They were quite similar in a lot of ways, both tall, ugly women who had no doubt struggled with bullies and ridicule for most of their lives. Both of them were very guarded when it came to making friends.

Brienne regretted it, in a lot of ways, but it was also nice to be free of the expectations to do something she was not very good at. Their friendship was uncomplicated, at least.

“So I got myself a set of those kettlebells I showed you,” Meris said after a moment.

“How are they?”

“Not great. They uh... I don’t think they’re too good. The weight isn’t right, one feels heavier than the other.”

“Oh. Maybe send them back? Get a more expensive set?”

Meris chewed her lip. “Yeah, uh... That’s the thing.”

“What thing?”

“I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Oh. Um... Okay.”

“I earn well. Not bad. But... It’s the medical debt.”

She took a hand off the wheel to point at her chest.

Brienne had, of course, noticed her friend had undergone a double mastectomy; they showered together at the gym, after all. But she’d never known whether it was okay to ask about it, if it was too personal or was something Meris didn’t want attention drawn to.

So she’d never mentioned it.

“Plus, you know... My mum is old. She needs a carer to help her, but they only provide one twice a week.”

“Are you … are you trying to ask me for money, Meris?” Brienne asked. Jaime had warned her that this is what it could be like.

“No!” Meris looked horrified. “Gods, no. I’d – I’d never! Not ever. Shit.” The other woman looked flustered as all the hells now, stuttering and blushing.

“I’m sorry,” Brienne said. “I got that totally wrong, I’m sorry. Really.”

“Well,” Meris said, the colour in her face darkening further. “Not _totally_ wrong.”

Brienne swallowed.

“After I dropped you home last night,, some of those guys, those journalists, they approached me. Blocked my car and everything.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“They thought I was your sister!”

It wasn’t the first time they had heard that. A couple of the mouthier guys at the gym had taken to calling them The Swole Twins. “What – what did you tell them?” Brienne asked.

“I told them we aren’t related! But ... they wanted to talk to me. About you and Jaime. They wanted to know what you’re both like.”

“Oh.”

“They offered me money. Quite a bit of money if I could take some photos of you. At the gym or at work … mostly if I went to your house and could get pictures of your husband, though.”

Brienne swallowed. Took a deep breath. Gods, what was she meant to say? “You want … you want me to say that’s okay?”

“No! No … not – not if it’s not. Really. I’m not that kind of person, I’d never do it if you didn’t want me to. But I don’t know if you mind. I don’t know how this works, I’ve – I’ve never known anyone famous before.”

Meris was tying herself in knots, Brienne realised. Trying not to offend, but trying to be honest. Not knowing if she was doing either. Brienne could empathise.

“I’m not famous,” Brienne said. “I don’t want to be, and nor does Jaime. I was hoping the press would get bored with us and leave us alone. You know, once they see we’re just a normal couple raising kids. I – I didn’t want to feed this whole circus any more.”

“Of course. Yes. I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you did – it’s good that I know.”

Meris nodded. She was positively scarlet now. Fidgety when she changed gear.

“Thanks,” Brienne said again.

“No problem.”

Neither spoke again until they got to the gym, and even then they only talked about what they were doing. Brienne found herself keeping her hood up while she trained. Keeping her head down. Meris couldn’t look her in the eye.

She kept thinking about her social media, thinking of all the people she was friends with who she hadn’t seen in years. All the people who she wasn’t sure would be loyal enough not to share the photos she had on there of Cub’s birth, or the wedding photos out in the Dothraki sea, surrounded by grass and flowers and with a tiny Cub at her breast.

She wanted to think that people wouldn’t do it, but … Meris had money problems, important ones that meant she couldn’t afford to take care of her sick mother properly. Despite what Roose Bolton said, Brienne knew what it was like to be poor, to worry about the future, to desperately wonder if you’d be able to feed yourself in a moon’s time.

Perhaps Jaime was right. Everything had another edge to it now. Now she had to wonder about the loyalty of literally everyone around her.

Seriously, fuck this.

Work was a little easier, only because they had some training exercises to do and had very little time for her colleagues to gawp at her or ask questions. She changed by herself in the corner of the locker room, though. Just in case any of them had been approached and weren’t so courteous as Meris.

By the time she got home, the journalists were waiting for her. It seemed they had figured out when she finished work and had a second contingent prepared to let the first ones sleep.

As usual, she ignored them completely as she went into the house. Locked and bolted the door behind her.

Jaime was awake.

That was unusual for him – usually, he was pretty tired after running around after the kids all evening and was fast asleep by the time she got home at around one.

But he was laid out on the sofa, feet up with his head on a pillow, looking at his phone.

Unlike Brienne, Jaime wasn’t much for games – there wasn’t much he could play with only one hand. He was scrolling, his brow furrowed. He didn’t even look up when she came in. Dumped her gear and her gym bag on top of the toy box.

“Jaime?” she said.

He looked up.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Wanted to make sure you got home okay.”

“Oh. Thanks, I did.”

“They’re still out there, right?” Jaime asked. “Don’t suppose they’ve given up and gone home?”

Brienne scoffed. “No.”

“The pricks were out there smoking right by the boys’ window. Talking about some woman they shagged. I had to stop Cub from opening the curtain about thirty million times.”

Brienne shook her head as she pulled off her boots. “They really don’t give a shit that this is our house, do they?”

“No,” agreed Jaime, his face dark. “At least I had gates and walls and a security guard back at Casterly. I could at least get out of the back door. I could at least leave the curtains open.”

Brienne sighed, sadly.

“Did you read that second interview with your dad?” Jaime asked, showing her the screen on his phone.

Brienne shook her head. She’d read the headline, that was enough.

“He didn’t actually say he thought you’d changed since you’ve been with me. Not like _that_. That fucking headline makes it sound like he thinks you fell under my evil influence. He actually said he was happy to see you change and grow when you got with me.”

“’Change and grow?!’” Brienne winced. “He said that?!”

Jaime had a wicked grin on his face now. “I’m paraphrasing. But he _likes_ me. He thinks I’ve been good for you.”

“Really?” Selwyn had been a little odd around Jaime if she was honest. Not out-and-out hostile, but there had always been … a distance. Like he didn’t know what to make of the man she’d married.

“Apparently so.”

“I wish he’d have told _me_ rather than some dick from a newspaper.”

“That would have been nice,” Jaime agreed. He sat up, stretching. Looking at her with a little appreciative smile on his face as she took her shorts off. “Did you … have a good workout?”

“Not bad,” she said, softly. She knew that hunger in his eyes. That lost look that said he needed comfort – the kind of comfort that involved being squeezed between her thighs. That was quintessential horny Jaime.

She walked across the living room towards him. He stood up – already his cock tented his harem pants. They met in the middle. Kissed furiously.

He pushed her towards the bedroom. She stopped him. So much of their recent sex life had been conducted in the dark, grunting and shushing each other beneath the sheets. Getting it over with in case Dayne or Cub woke up.

She didn’t want that tonight.

She pushed Jaime into the kitchen instead, frantically eating his face as they went. A hand on his chest. A hand down the front of his trousers.

Jaime was loud – probably too loud considering there were journalists outside and kids asleep two rooms away. He moaned and hissed and hummed and groaned.

Brienne didn’t care. She shoved him at the table. All but picked him up and threw him down amid the dirty dinner plates. Yanked his harem pants off and tore his t-shirt up to see that perfect golden chest. All his beads amid his chest hair.

She licked him. A long stripe up his belly to his nipple. His guttural groan made the dirty dishes rattle. His locs were in the ketchup on Cub’s plate.

She wanted to fuck him. No preamble, no foreplay – she was stupidly wet already. She shoved her knickers down. Clambered on top of him, on top of the table, her thighs bare and big astride him. Her cunt swallowed him whole in one long, aching thrust.

His hand went to her sex, his thumb on her clit, just pressure. His mouth open, panting. His face naked pleasure, astonished, overwhelmed. She fucked him hard, grinding against his thumb, grinding his cock inside her just how she liked it. Selfish, greedy.

She came so quickly it took her breath away. So hard it burned her, inside and out – as though her body were shocked by how fast it was.

“Oh, yes,” Jaime hissed. “Oh, fuck, yes.”

He grabbed her arse. Thrust frantically upwards, faster and faster, his arse thumping the tabletop, his head thrown back, his eyes screwed shut.

“Yes,” Brienne moaned. “Fuck me. Fuck me hard.”

Jaime made a strangled mewling sound. Dug his nails into the meat of her arse cheek. He was going to come – he was going to _come_.

Then, abruptly, he pulled his cock out of her. Took his hand from her arse to grasp it. Brienne watched in disbelief as he sprayed his load over his belly up to his beads.

“What are you doing?” she gasped. “I’m – I’m ovulating!”

Jaime opened his eyes. Still gasping. “Yeah,” he huffed. “But –” He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen door. Outside.

“What difference does that make?”

“Well... You know.” He sat up beneath her, reaching for a tea towel to clean himself.

“I don’t!”

“Let’s just hold fire for a bit, shall we?”

“What? Why?”

“I’m just ... I’m just not certain.”

“Since when?”

“Well, you know.”

“Stop saying I know! I don’t know! We haven’t used a condom in a moon, we talked about this, we decided we wanted one more. We were excited about it. _You_ were!”

“Yeah.”

“So... What? You’ve changed your mind?”

“It’s not that. I still want another, you know I do. I love being a dad, it’s everything to me.”

Brienne got up. Wiped her thighs with the tea towel and pulled her knickers back on. Her face was burning, and at the back of her eyes, tears threatened.

“I just think we should maybe wait. See what happens.”

“Why?” she asked, and her voice cracked as she said it.

He looked at her like his heart might break. “Because of all this. This … _attention_. Is it fair to bring a baby into this?”

“But we –“

“You want to be pushing a baby out with that pack outside? You want to get your photograph taken right after? Have our baby’s photograph taken?”

“It wouldn’t be like that.”

“No? How do you know that, Brienne? How do _you_ know that? With all your shopping-centre security guard experience?”

“Jaime! I –”

“This has been most of my adult life. I was a badboy, favourite-of-your-granny popular classical musician. Everything I did was shocking and scandalous to my fans and damn did it sell newspapers. This attention never stops, it never goes away. Even if they’re not in a pack outside your front door, they’re only a phone call away from being here. Qarth is the arse-end of nowhere, and I thought I’d be safe. All those guys outside ever get to report on is the antics of Westeros’s most drunken holidaymakers. Me being here is an absolute gift to them.”

She didn’t say anything. Her face burned.

“Trust me, Brienne. _Please_.”

“So that’s it, is it? Our lives are over? No more walks on the beach, no more swimming in the sea with the boys? No more weekends camping in Genna or barbeques outside in front of the house? Never again? We just have to sit indoors with the curtains closed _forever_?”

“No, I – I don’t know, I –”

“And … we’re not going to do any of the things we’d planned to do? No holiday in the Summer Isles? No anniversary trip to Yi Ti?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But no baby. We’re literally not going to complete our family because of this?”

Jaime closed his eyes. “Don’t say it like that.”

“How should I say it then? Some way that makes it more palatable?”

“We knew this could happen. It’s always been on the horizon. We’re just lucky that Roose Bolton didn’t recognise me back in Winterfell.”

“Why? Would you not have wanted Dayne?”

“Of course I would! Gods, Brienne!”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference was then … then it was your choice. And I would have respected it whatever you had chosen. Why can’t you respect me now?”

“That is _not_ the same. We’ve made the decision. We’ve discussed it, we agreed we’d try. We’ve _been trying_ , Jaime. For all we know, I could already be pregnant.”

“Well, if you are, then … we’ll deal with it. But everything’s changed, Brienne. I don’t think you understand how much.”

“I probably don’t. But I definitely don’t understand why you’ve just given up.”

“Given _up_?”

“Isn’t what we have worth preserving? The lives we built, the family we have? We just resign ourselves to being trapped by your past? All of us?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You did. And you’ve been acting that way, too. As if it’s all over, as if there’s no point to even feeding the kids any more!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Brienne scoffed.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about this any more tonight. I know it’s upset you – and I hate that. I’m sorry. But … I can’t carry on as if nothing is happening. We don’t know what our lives are going to be like in nine months – we shouldn’t blindly carry on with something so huge as bringing a life into the world.”

Brienne blinked back her tears. “Fine,” she said, unable to prevent it from sounding like a sob. “You’ve made your mind up, I can see that.”

“I have. For now, I have.”

“Then you’re right, there isn’t any more to say tonight. I’m … I’ll go to bed.”

She stood there a moment longer, hoping he would say something, hoping he would respond in some way to the fact that she was crying. Usually, he would comfort her. No matter what, no matter what it was she cried about. Even if he himself had been the cause.

But Jaime couldn’t even look her in the eye.

Feeling sick to her stomach, weak and exhausted, Brienne went to bed. She lay shaking underneath the sheets, waiting for him. Just waiting for him to come and hold her, tell her everything would be all right, that they could get through this together.

He didn’t.

Instead, she heard him in the living room, talking to someone on the phone. Hanging up and talking to someone else. Who?

Then she heard him go into the bathroom. Heard the shower start. He was in there for _ages_. What in all the hells was he doing?

Eventually, she heard him get out. Heard him start the electric razor he used to keep his beard neat. He did _that_ for ages, too. Was he hoping she would fall asleep? Hoping he could avoid her all night?

She heard him getting dressed – that was weird as well; Jaime _always_ slept naked. He opened the cupboard in the hallway. Why? The only things that were in there were a few old things from when they’d lived in Winterfell.

She heard rustling. Then she heard the boys’ bedroom door open.

She heard his footsteps, slow and tentative across the floorboards. He tiptoed in there, all the way. Was he kissing them goodnight? Was he feeling bad and just wanted to watch them sleep?

She heard him leave again. Heard him head back into the hallway – surely he _must_ be coming to bed now. He _must_ be.

Instead, he headed back into the living room, his footsteps strangely loud now. Gods, was he wearing _shoes_?

Brienne got out of bed. Jaime _never_ wore shoes in the house. Never ever.

She opened the door, followed him through the house, into the kitchen, where he was bending to unbolt the door.

“Jaime?”

He span to face her – clearly taken completely unawares.

Brienne gasped. This … this was not her husband, not at all.

He was wearing jeans. A pair of hers, she thought, and a hoodie that had been hers in Winterfell, as well. He had his snowboots on, the same pair he had bought in the airport during his first frantic dash to Winterfell.

But gods … his hair!

He had shaven his head. Completely. His locs were gone, and only golden-grey stubble peeked from his hoodie where they had once been.

Brienne couldn’t speak. She just gaped at him.

He gaped at her, too, his hand still on the door handle. The keys to Genna sticking out of his pocket. Over his shoulder was his violin case. Of course it was.

He was sneaking out in the middle of the night with the 102BC Cersei Valyrian with him. The violin he hadn’t touched in years.

Because after everything, after all of this, _that_ was what he wanted. _That_ was what he had snuck into his sleeping children’s bedroom for.

For Cersei.

Brienne drew a breath. Jaime looked away.

“I’m not leaving you,” he said. His voice was weak, and full of shame. “I was just... distracting them. For a while.”

“A while?”

“If I go away, they’ll lose interest in you. They’ll leave you alone, you and the boys.”

“Where were you going?”

“Home. Westeros – Casterly Rock. My brother is there. I thought if I looked more like myself, if I took the violin, I’d be recognised at the airport. Then that lot outside would leave you alone.”

“They’d think you left me!”

“Well, I’d look like the bastard, then, wouldn’t I?”

“But you were planning to come back?”

He shrugged. “Of course. At some point. I don’t know, but … maybe I could make myself unrecognisable again?”

Brienne shook her head. Sighed. “It’s not a bad idea,” she said.

Jaime blinked in surprise.

“Casterly Rock is big, yes?” She’d only seen a few photographs, briefly. “Big, with gates. Walls?”

Jaime nodded.

“Perhaps we should all go? Just for a while. Until we figure out what’s next – if we want to stay in hiding or if we want to try and live around this.”

“Really?” Jaime asked. “You’d want that?”

Brienne screwed up her brow. “Yes. Of course yes. I don’t want to be away from my husband for what? Five, six moons? That’s not a marriage. We stay together, our family stays together. Perhaps in Casterly Rock, with the security and the space, things will be easier.”

She reached a tentative hand towards him.

He took it.

“Cancel your flight,” she told him. “Book more, for the morning, for all of us. We’ll pack, and have an adventure with the boys. It will seem like fun for them.”

He nodded. Looked down at his boots. Ran his thumb back and forth over the back of Brienne’s hand. “I love you,” he told her.

“I know you do. And I love you, too.”

Jaime made the calls, and another to Tyrion, to tell him to expect all of them instead. Then he followed Brienne into their bedroom. Took off her jeans. Took off her hoodie.

They made love in the cool grey light of dawn, sighing and sweating and staring into each other’s eyes. The rise and fall of Jaime’s body over hers, the pleasure on his face. The love in his eyes. The peace.

He came before she did, inside her, moaning softly into her neck. Then kissing down the sweat of her body to put his mouth on her.

Brienne cursed and arched and tried to grab his locs. His hair was so short now, just bristles, rough on her palm as he pulled her to the edge of the bed. Knelt on the floor to let her sprawl out, grasping pillows and sheets and wrapping her thighs around his head.

She came, and came again – he was relentless. His hand roamed all over her body, his stump hooked beneath her arse to keep her in place. He played her body like the virtuoso he was, the violin propped, forgotten, in the corner of the room.

As the sun came up on a new day, there were new pleasures to look forward to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to CaptainTarthister for reading and helping me with some dodgy bits this chapter. Despite an insanely terrible week involving disastrous floods in her country and indeed being affected herself, she still wanted to read this as soon as it was done! What a woman!
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who commented on the previous chapter, so sorry I didn't get any time to write replies, but I promise I will do better this time. Your comments are much appreciated. 
> 
> If you'd like updates and teasers as they happen, then please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	3. The Rock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family have escaped to Casterly Rock.

With a flight delay, Dayne wetting his trousers on takeoff, and having to fight through paparazzi while they tried to hire a car, the O’Tarth family did not arrive at Casterly Rock until almost 1am.

Dayne was asleep in his car seat, but Cub was wide awake, alternating between exhausted grizzling and excitable chatter.

In the back, Pod slept. The two cats cried in their carriers. The suitcases rattled.

Brienne just wanted to sleep. Travelling with both kids was exhausting at the best of times, but with half their belongings, all their pets and Jaime so strung out, this had not been one of their better journeys.

Despite the late hour, Casterly Rock was busy when they arrived; they were passed by three taxis and a limo as they made their way up the long driveway. The front of the house was equally busy.

Drunk women in strappy dresses stumbled in and out of the main doors, helped to and from cars. Men, sniffing and rubbing their noses, hung out of windows or looked jittery and paranoid. Inside, thumping music played.

It was clearly one hell of a party.

Leaning in the doorway, smoking and laughing with a guest while looking completely out of place in his morning suit, stood Tyrion’s butler Mr Bronn. He winked and laughed and slapped backs, slipping little baggies of cocaine to people as they arrived.

He pulled himself upright and jogged down the steps when he saw Jaime.

“Ah, you’re here then,” he said. It was probably the least butler-like tone Brienne could have imagined.

“We’re here,” Jaime replied.

“Your brother said to send you round to your wing. He’s got everything ready.”

“Oh. Sure. I’ll drive round.”

Bronn looked up, distracted by a girl throwing up in a rosebush. “Go for it, mate,” he told Jaime. Slapped the roof of the car.

In the back, Dayne woke up, staring wide-eyed at everything going on outside the car. The man drinking from a champagne bottle. The group passing a spliff between them. The woman kissing two men at once.

Jaime said nothing. He kept his eyes on the gravel. Chewed his lip as he drove.

It took them a while to drive around the outside of the massive sprawl that was Casterly Rock. The old Rock Gallery, the glass summer house, the modern staff apartments. The Dornish Gardens, the Sunken Courtyard. The East Fountain, carved with resplendent lions.

Jaime and Brienne had been here only a couple of times since getting together, and they had never stayed the night. Mostly Jaime had wanted to leave as fast as he could.

Jaime pulled the car up beside the Royal Wing, just as the big oak doors opened. The staff stood waiting, all of whom looked pristine and well prepared despite the lateness of the hour.

Jaime greeted them warmly as Brienne got the boys out of the car. He paid particular attention to a tall copper-haired man dressed in tweeds, actually bringing him in for a hug.

“Brienne,” he called. “This is Addam. He used to be my manservant!”

“Your … manservant?” Brienne asked, not sure she managed to keep the amusement out of her voice. Jaime had a manservant?

“I’m the gamekeeper now,” he grinned, reaching out a calloused hand to shake Brienne’s.

Gamekeeper. Of course he was.

At Brienne’s feet, Cub reached out his hand too. Addam duly shook it.

Just then, Tyrion Lannister pushed his way between the servants and out into the yard to greet his brother. He had a wine glass in his hand, and he wore a very expensive-looking dinner jacket, his black bow-tie undone and his collar open.

“Jaime!” he cried, pulling his brother down for a big hug.

Jaime wrapped him in his arms and squeezed – for all their weird childhood, the brothers were close.

“I was expecting you hours ago,” Tyrion said. “I’m afraid I started your welcome home party without you.”

“You know how it is,” Jaime said. “Press following us everywhere.”

Tyrion made a sympathetic face. Then he seemed to notice his goodsister. “You look, uhm … _well_ , Brienne,” he told her, with something that was almost a snigger. “And is that Cub?! Wow... You’re not a baby any more!”

Cub flew to his uncle, joining the hug between Jaime and Tyrion. Dayne held onto Brienne’s hand, but he waved. Tyrion waved back.

“There are lots of new toys in the nursery,” Tyrion promised with a grin. “New bikes. Maybe a trampoline in the tennis court. Oh, and Addam is putting up a treehouse for you in the spinney.”

“A treehouse?” Dayne’s eyes went wide. He loved the idea of his own den, somewhere quiet to read and play.

“I’ll take you down there tomorrow,” promised Addam.

“Aw, Tyrion,” Jaime said. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I did. I don’t get many chances to spoil my nephews.”

“Thank you,” Jaime said, and hugged his brother again.

“Now,” Tyrion said, taking a drink from his wine glass. “You’re in your suite of course, but I’ve given the boys the nursery. I had them all redecorated: the two rooms off the nursery, plus the playroom and the breakfast room there.”

“Great.”

Tyrion turned and beckoned to a small, portly woman in her forties with an endearing overbite. “This is Bancey,” he said. “She has very kindly, and at great expense, I might add, agreed to leave the Reynes’ to come and be your nanny instead.”

Tyrion grinned in pride as if the woman were an acquisition and an accomplishment rather than an employee.

“Very nice to meet you all,” Bancey said.

“She’s a night nurse and a qualified teacher as well,” Tyrion boasted. “So she can handle all of the tutoring.”

“Excellent,” said Jaime. “Tyrion, thank you. I know this has been short notice. I – “

“Oh, not _that_ short notice,” Tyrion said with a wave of his wine glass. “I knew you’d probably need to come home as soon as I saw your unwashed, dreadlocked mug in the papers.”

“Fuckers,” Jaime swore, in front of the boys, which made Brienne frown.

Tyrion nodded with sympathy. “Well, I’d best get back to your guests. You know Ygritte will drown someone in the champagne fountain if I’m not there.”

Jaime laughed.

Goodnight, I hope you sleep well. I’ve told the kitchen to get an early start tomorrow, so just ring the pull whenever you’re ready for breakfast.”

“Will do,” said Jaime.

Brienne had no idea what “ring the pull” even meant.

Tyrion disappeared back into the maze of Casterly Rock, and it was left to the servants to deal with everything else.

It felt strange, to have four uniformed men run to the back of the car and pull out all their suitcases. To have Addam the gamekeeper introduce himself to Podrick, feed him a doggy treat and ruffle his ears and then lead him off to the kennels for the night. For a couple of serving girls to take the cats, promising they would settle them.

And … the nanny.

The nanny. A proper nanny in stout shoes and a tweed skirt. Brienne had no idea that these people really existed.

Bancey seemed nice, though. Not at all stiff or formal with the boys. She smiled a lot and laughed readily as the boys introduced themselves, asking about what toys they liked and whether they liked to read or draw or enjoyed playing outside. By the time they arrived at the boys’ rooms, they were both holding her hands.

Somehow, the suitcases had arrived ahead of them, and they were already opened, a team of servants moving around, decanting the contents into wardrobes, drawers and onto toy shelves.

They had a look around – Tyrion really had spared no expense in decorating these rooms and filling them with toys, books and games for the boys. They had a bedroom each, with cabin beds, little desks, toy chests and lots of new things everywhere.

Once they had explored, Bancey asked the boys to say goodnight to their parents – which Cub ignored in favour of peddling like a mad thing on a shiny new tricycle. Dayne kissed them both dutifully, but he looked a bit unsure.

Jaime and Brienne left their boys in bancey’s care, and walked through the long, winding corridors towards Jaime’s suite. Again, inside there was a flurry of activity, the cases being unpacked and the contents being put away. Brienne was mortified to see her scruffy period knickers being left in a very ornate antique chest of drawers.

Jaime turned to her, a smile on his face that didn’t quite touch his eyes. His eyes were everywhere, skittish. “Well, this is my room. What do you think?”

“It’s … very nice.”

Jaime nodded. “I must admit I have missed this bed.”

The bed was enormous. Not only the sleeping area but … it was tall, too. A giant, antique polished wood four-poster, its curtains thick with red-and-gold brocade lions.

“Yes,” said Brienne. “It’s very nice.”

The two of them stood there in silence while the servants finished unpacking, not sure what to say. Not sure what to do. The suitcases were spirited away, an offer of food and drink was made, which they declined.

The servants left, closing the door behind them.

Jaime pulled his coat off. Dumped it on a chair. Then he picked it up again and hung it in on a hanger inside one of the looming armoires. He undid his snowboots and put them away too. There was blood on his sock from a blister – in Qarth Jaime never wore anything heavier than a pair of Crocs.

He sat down to examine it, wincing as he pulled his sock away.

“Maybe we should move a little closer to the boys,” Brienne said.

“What?”

“They’re _miles_ away, Jaime. What’s going to happen when Cub wakes up?”

“Bancey is their night nurse.”

“Yes, but – he doesn’t know her.”

Jaime shrugged. “Looks like he liked her fine. Besides, it will probably do him good. He can’t keep getting in our bed every night.”

Brienne gaped – this wasn’t like Jaime. He was _always_ the one putting the kids in their bed, always the one talking about co-sleeping and bonding and natural parenting. “I know! But – he won’t. Dayne grew out of it, didn’t he?”

“Most of the time.”

“it’s only if he’s ill. Gods, Jaime – what happens if they’re ill?”

“Then, Bancey takes care of them. We get to sleep, she gets paid to clean up the puke.”

“Really?”

Jaime grinned. “Really.”

That didn’t sound all that bad. But …

“Look,” Jaime sighed. “They’re tired. They’re just going to flake out and go straight to sleep tonight, they won’t be any bother.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Well,” he said with a raised eyebrow, “they aren’t one room away, I know. _But_ … they also aren’t one room away.”

“What?”

“So … we don’t have to worry.”

“Worry about what?”

“You know. Being _quiet_.”

“Oh!”

Jaime had a wicked grin on now – for the first time since he’d shaved his locs, he actually looked like _Jaime_. And when he leaned up on his tiptoes to kiss Brienne, he tasted like Jaime too.

“Well, that _is_ an advantage, I must admit,” Brienne whispered. Maybe this was okay. Maybe it would just take some getting used to.

Jaime kissed her again, wet and hungry. Her hands went to his face; he tugged at the buttons on her jeans. Pushed them down over her arse. Tugged them off her as she sat on the edge of that huge bed.

“I’m going to make you _scream_ ,” he boasted.

It had been a while since Brienne had screamed during sex—a lifetime ago – Dayne’s lifetime, at least. She wasn’t sure she could even lose it like that any more.

But Jaime was enthusiastic about trying, to say the least. He dropped to his knees by the edge of the bed, grinning that damnably handsome grin that still made her belly flip. He winked up at her and took the waistband of her knickers in his teeth with a growl.

Probably this would work a lot better if she was wearing some silky, lacy g-string rather than steel blue boy shorts, but that didn’t seem to bother Jaime.

Before she knew what had happened, he had pulled them off. Thrown them over his shoulder. Then she was sprawled back on the bed with Jaime’s tongue doing obscene things to all her most obscene places.

It sounded _filthy_ already, Jaime humming and slurping and moaning and muttering obscenities into her cunt.

Brienne grabbed at his head, grabbed at the sheets, lay back to writhe on the blankets, sat up to watch him tongue her. Her legs were wound about his arms, her toes curled tight between his shoulder blades.

Jaime took his time – the way he’d always used to. Brienne hadn’t realised how much they had gotten into the habit of rushing sex. Back in the early days, they had spent hours exploring each other, teasing and playing, but learning, too.

Lately, they had tended to bring each other off as quickly as they could, going straight for the kill in case one of the kids woke up, or because they were tired.

So now it was maddening, agonising, mind-bending to be teased like this. Jaime brought her to the swollen, urgent edge so many times only to pull back with a grin or change his pace just as she was about to come.

She had forgotten just how well he knew her body. He truly, truly did. He knew every millimetre of her clit, where she needed pressure, where she liked to be teased, what made her squirm and cry and beg.

Beg him she did. It was almost humiliating to hear herself plead for a man’s tongue, but gods, it turned her on to be so helpless at Jaime’s touch.

When he finally, finally, thankfully, let her come, her whole body was so attuned to the whims of his tongue that the pleasure surged through every part of her. Muscles in her arms, her legs, her feet, her hands, her back, her belly, all quivered in resonance as she thrust helplessly against his face.

And gods, yes, she screamed. A little for show, a little for Jaime’s benefit, but it felt _good_ to let it out.

Jaime was very pleased with himself, of course. He disengaged himself from her sighing, shuddering form and prowled up the bed to kiss her with his lips smiling and sticky from her cunt.

She was still half-dressed – him completely, the outline of his hard cock very prominent in his jeans.

“Lie down,” she told him.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Lie down!” she said, more firmly. Now it was Jaime’s turn to scream, and there was always a surefire way to make him do _that_.

He reclined on the pillows, grinning, still with a couple of her pubic hairs between his teeth. Brienne pulled off her jumper. Undid her bralette. She straddled him and popped the button on his jeans.

Jaime reached for her, his hand squeezing the meat of her thigh.

She batted him away. Grabbed his hand and his stump and held them both, firm, against the headboard. “Don’t move!” she snarled at him.

His grin grew even bigger. He gripped the headboard, his fingers curling around an ornately carved lion’s neck.

She yanked his jeans down, taking his underpants with them. Jaime owned underpants? Then she noticed they were hers, a pair of polka dot knickers he must have pulled out of the wash. His cock bounced out of them looking shiny and delicious.

She left his jeans at his knees and he arched his hips towards her, almost involuntarily.

“Fuck me,” Jaime groaned, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper.

“Shut up!” she snarled. Curled a hand about his throat and squeezed.

His eyes went wide – it had been a while since she had done _this_. Between her legs, she felt his cock jump, prodding insistently at her sticky thighs.

“Harder,” he choked.

Brienne didn’t like to do it harder. Jaime would probably urge her to throttle him unconscious if he could, but Brienne wasn’t comfortable pushing those sorts of boundaries. She took her hand off his neck and slapped him, instead.

“I said shut up.”

She slid her hand down his chest. Got hold of his cock a little too roughly. Squeezed it until he flinched. Then she sank down on it, swallowing his whole length with her cunt, in one long stroke.

Jaime whimpered. “Fuck me _hard_ ,” he pleaded.

She let that one go, just because she had absolutely been planning to fuck him as hard as she could.

She started gently, though, just to tease him: just a slow pull, a slow squeeze. Jaime moaned. He throbbed inside her – he wasn’t going to last very long, she knew.

Her pace quickened – his hand grew white on the headboard. He turned his head to bite the pillow – Brienne grabbed him by the jaw to make him look at her. Pushed the heel of her hand into his windpipe. Just the threat of strangulation was quite enough.

Oh, that did it. That did it straight away.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck … _fuck_!” he yelled. He arched off the bed beneath her as he lost control, his cock rigid and thick inside her as it pulsed. Brienne closed her eyes and grinned – he hadn’t had a hope in all the hells.

Then there was a loud crack—the sound of splintering wood.

Brienne opened her eyes to see a lion’s head in Jaime’s hand. Jaime looked at it with wide eyes, even as he panted.

Brienne rolled off him. Caught her breath sprawled beside him on the pillows for a moment.

“Shit,” Jaime said. “I … I broke the lion? I broke the bed?”

He got up on his knees, his jeans still around his ankles, trying to see if the lion’s head would go back on. “This bed was commissioned by my great-great-grandfather!”

“Oh. Sorry … Could someone repair it?”

“Shit, it’s – it’s fucked!” He ran his finger down the headboard. Not only was the lion’s head broken, but there was a crack that ran the length of the wood, dissecting a cherub and two family crests.

“Maybe ... some superglue?” she suggested.

Jaime looked at her like she had two heads. “This is not fucking funny, Brienne!”

“I – I know. I wasn’t –”

Brienne had to admit that part of her wanted to laugh – Jaime looked quite absurd, frantically trying to fix a wooden lion with his cock deflating between his legs. But that didn’t mean she didn’t care.

“It’s a priceless antique!” he cried. “One-of-a-kind … a family heirloom. It would need a professional restorer at the very least, and it’s not going to ever be the same.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Jaime scoffed. He threw the lion’s head onto the pillows. Got off the bed and pulled his jeans back up. “It’s fucking typical. Absolutely nothing goes fucking right any more.”

Brienne sat up. “Jaime –”

He held up his hand. “I need a smoke.”

Brienne’s eyebrows shot up. Jaime hadn’t smoked since she had moved to Qarth, back when she was pregnant with Dayne.

He slammed out of the room, stomping even in his socks.

Brienne sighed. She put the lion’s head on the chest of drawers and hunted around the suite looking for the bathroom. There was a drawing-room, a breakfast room—two walk-in wardrobes filled with clothes that must have once been Jaime and Lysa’s.

There was a locked room, too. It had a light above the door – maybe it was a darkroom or something?

The bathroom was just beyond this, and it was surprisingly modern – a huge walk-in shower and his n’ hers sinks. Clean, black tiles on the floor and walls. A passageway led to a sunken bathtub that would probably have fitted eight people in it.

Brienne showered – she didn’t want to know how long it would take to fill a bath that big.

She found towels, dried herself. Brushed out her hair. Found her pyjamas and got into the bed. It creaked alarmingly as she rolled over, but the crack in the headboard did not get any bigger, thankfully.

There was no TV, so Brienne just went to sleep.

She woke early, to a drizzly dawn light through the vast gothic windows, and to a naked Jaime asleep and drooling on his pillow beside her. She had no idea when he had got back. He smelled like cigarettes and alcohol.

Brienne showered again, and in the absence of knowing where her children or her dog were, she dressed in her workout gear and went for a run. It had been some time since she had been for a run without journalists following her – it would be nice not to be in the paper the next day looking exhausted and sweaty.

Not that there was much chance of sweaty in the Westerlands. The morning was chilly and misty, her little shorts and cropped t-shirt far too small for the weather. Even after a full five laps of the grounds, Brienne was freezing.

She was also lost.

She went back into the house by the door she thought she’d left from – but nothing inside was familiar. Just a huge sweeping staircase that led to three more hallways, to a billiards room and a room that was marked as a salon, whatever that was.

Several rooms were still untidy from last night’s party, with streamers and canapé plates and champagne flutes everywhere.

It was there, in the library next to the salon, still dressed in last night’s dinner jacket and still drinking, that she found Jaime’s brother.

He had an audience of five or six guests, one of whom was asleep with her head in his lap. Mr Bronn was there too, over to the side rolling joints on his leg. They looked to be playing some sort of drinking game.

Tyrion glanced up as she came in. Raised his glass to her. “Ah, my lovely goodsister. I think you might be cold in that outfit today?”

“I – I’ve been for a run.”

“Of course you have. How rude of me, I meant to say that you can of course use the swimming pool and the gym while you’re here.”

There was a swimming pool and a gym? “Thank you, that would be wonderful.”

“It would certainly save you having to dash about in the freezing fog first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Brienne said again.

“I hope you slept well? Better than Jaime, at least. My poor brother wasn’t happy at all when I saw him last.”

“Yes he – I’m afraid he broke the bed.”

“I rather thought that was the catalyst? Not the cause, if you see what I mean?”

“Well, yes –”

“There are twelve other beds around the house just like it.”

Twelve? Hadn’t Jaime said one-of-a-kind? Brienne nodded.

Tyrion continued to stare at her, a droll, amused regard seeping into his grin. “Always dramatic, my beloved brother. He’ll rail and fight this, but we all know why he came home really.”

Brienne didn’t know what Tyrion meant. Jaime had come to escape the press, to lie low until they could figure out what to do next. Was he implying there was more to it? She nodded again, politely.

“Of course, I’m not really sure why he brought _you_.”

Brienne laughed – that was a joke, right? He was a funny man, he was joking.

Tyrion didn’t laugh. He had his head tilted to one side, and his gaze was like a skewer. All his friends scrutinised her, too.

“Well, I … I’m his wife. I - we’re a family. I wasn’t going to let him –”

“Ah, you caught him leaving?”

Brienne froze.

Tyrion laughed. “That makes sense.”

Brienne looked away. “Well, I should get back. I have to find my …”

“You came in through the wrong doors,” Tyrion told her. You wanted the West vestibule, and you came in through the South.”

“I … oh. Thank you.”

She turned around and left, immediately hearing Tyrion and his friends erupt in laughter as she closed the door. She heard someone make a remark about her hairy legs.

By the time she found their suite again, Jaime was awake and dressed in clothes Brienne didn’t recognise. Smart clothes: a pair of chinos, polished black leather shoes, a shirt and a jumper tied by the sleeves around his neck.

Was it something from his old wardrobe? She gaped at him. Would the boys even recognise their dad?

He looked at her and shrugged. Pitched his cigarette out of the window. “Do you want some breakfast?” he asked.

A table had been laid in the middle of the room. Starched white cloths and silver cutlery. It was an islander’s breakfast, cold meats and preserved fish and lots of bread and pastry. Jaime had eaten already – his plate was dirty, his cutlery laid across it widthways.

“What about the boys?” she asked. “Have they eaten?”

“Probably, if they’re awake.”

“Did you see them? I couldn’t remember how to get back to their room.”

Jaime shrugged. “They have loads of toys to play with, and Addam said he would show them the treehouse this morning. I’m sure they’re fine.”

“I know they’re fine. I didn’t –”

“Then enjoy the quiet. The gods know we need to relax.”

Silence. Brienne watched Jaime fidget, fingers twitching, picking the skin on his thumb. “You don’t exactly look relaxed,” she said.

“I’m trying, okay?” he snapped. “It’s been stressful! I can’t … I can’t shake that feeling that there’s someone right outside the window, trying to take my picture.”

Brienne sighed. “It will probably take some time.”

Jaime nodded. His eyes looked wet, and he blinked. Blinked again.

“And … it’s got to be strange, being back here. Lots of things to deal with.”

Jaime didn’t comment. He pulled the velvet-covered rope that hung down the wall near the door. Paced the floor.

Brienne sat down to eat, even though she was still in her workout gear.

After a few minutes, a servant knocked and then entered.

“Who are you?” Jaime barked at the girl.

“Mya,” she answered at once.

“Are you new?”

“I started last year, ser.”

“I need more coffee. And … we’ll take a family lunch. In the Corlos Room. Midday?” he looked at Brienne as if to confirm, but didn’t wait for a response. “Ask Bancey to have the children ready. Tell my brother, too. Hopefully he should have kicked his hangover and started on the next one by then.”

Mya nodded. “Of course, ser.”

“Thank you,” he told the girl, dismissing her.

She bowed her head and left.

“There,” Jaime said to Brienne when she had gone. “A nice family lunch. That should make you feel better.”

Brienne smiled reluctantly and chewed her pastry. A _nice family lunch_ usually meant a barbeque on the beach, or food on the verandah while they sprawled out on beanbags. It didn’t mean servants, or a room with a name, or the kids getting ready with a nanny. It certainly didn’t mean Tyrion Lannister and his acid tongue.

She was tempted to tell Jaime what had occurred earlier, but … it was his brother, the brother he hadn’t seen much in the last five years. And Jaime wasn’t right. He was nervy, snappy, on edge … completely unlike his usual laid back self. The last thing he needed was pettiness between his wife and his brother. That wasn’t who she was.

She could cope with it, she decided. Brienne was good at being the bigger man.

But lunchtime made her feel anything _but_ big. The Corlos Room was absolutely vast, with a dining table that could easily have accommodated a banquet. The walls were covered with portraits of long-dead Lannisters, their piercing green eyes and golden hair making Brienne wonder how much inbreeding had gone on in Jaime’s ancestry.

She felt distinctly underdressed, too, wearing her jeans and a jumper. Even the boys had been dressed in entirely new clothes, smart ones, and someone, somehow, had managed to get Cub to wear shoes indoors.

It felt like a lifetime since she had seen her boys. They looked so … _neat_. So much more grown-up, too. Both of then had their hair tied back, both of them in collared shirts—all in soft, neutral tones where normally they wore bright, colourful things.

Like Jaime – just as Jaime always had.

Cub was busy chattering away to Bancey – he held a new toy rocket in one hand and a toy drill in another. One that whirred when he pressed the trigger. Dayne was quiet, his eyes big. He went straight to Brienne’s side as soon as he saw her. Put both his arms around her.

“You okay?” she asked him quietly as she hugged him back.

He squeezed her hand. “Can I sit with you, mummy?”

“Of course.”

There were name cards around the table, but Brienne pushed them aside and sat where she wanted: with her son at her side. She held his hand on her lap, kissed the soft curls on the top of his head. Bancey got Cub to his seat at the other side of the table, but of course, he got up again after less than a minute, wanting to test out his drill on one of the table legs. Jaime sat down on the other side of Dayne.

Just then, Tyrion came in.

He was still drinking, but he was out of his dinner jacket now, dressed in smart-casual, much the same as Jaime and the boys. Beside him, slender, pale, and clearly hungover in her enormous black sunglasses and black cashmere dress, was the redhead woman who had been asleep on Tyrion’s lap earlier.

She sat down without a word. The servants filled her wineglass without being asked.

“Well, this is a nice idea,” Tyrion told Jaime as he took his seat beside the woman.

Cub went to the back of his uncle’s chair, pretending to drill it.

Tyrion grinned at him. “You look very busy there, Cub. Enjoying yourself?”

Cub nodded, and moved on to drilling the sideboard.

“How have the boys settled in?” Tyrion asked. Brienne opened her mouth to answer, but she realised he was talking to Bancey.

“Very well, ser,” replied Bancey from her position behind the chair where Cub was supposed to be sitting. “Dayne and I have read half the library this morning, and little Cub … he’s very good with practical toys, I notice. Excellent fine motor skills.”

Jaime beamed. “He’s always fiddling with something!”

“Fiddling, eh?” Tyrion asked with a grin. He beckoned to a servant to refill the glass he’d walked in with. “Very interesting.”

The food was served then, or what Brienne presumed was the first course. Everyone was presented with a plate that had a single raviolo in the centre, sitting on a piece of pickled cucumber. Dayne looked at his mother, uncertainly. She nodded that it was okay, and he picked up his knife and fork. Carefully sawed his way into it, concentrating hard.

Bancey ushered Cub back to his seat. He picked the raviolo up with his fingers. Took a bite.

“Excellent idea, Cub!” Tyrion cried. He picked his own raviolo up and bit into it, just as his nephew had. This made both Cub and Dayne laugh, and even Jaime grinned.

“This is delicious!” Jaime told Tyrion. “Don’t tell me you finally got rid of The Hound?”

Tyrion grinned. “He got rid of himself! He got wrecked and had a fight in a pub in Lannisport. Stabbed three men and broke the leg of a fourth. So instead of serving us inedible swill, he’s serving rather a long custodial sentence in Rosby.”

“Gods!” Jaime said.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it,” Tyrion said as the servants cleared the plates away. “It was in all the papers. Nice and embarrassing for us, of course.”

“Oh I don’t read the papers,” Jaime said. “I didn’t. Not for a long time. I probably missed it.”

The next group of servants came in then, carrying bowls of soup. Cold soup, Brienne noticed as the bowls were placed down in perfect sync. Cold cucumber soup that smelled of yoghurt and tarragon, and had been exquisitely finished with a drizzle of dill oil and a sprinkling of some sort of seed.

“When was it, Ygritte?” Tyrion asked the still-silent woman beside him. “Two years ago? Three?”

“Three,” she said, in the kind of heavy Northern accent that Brienne hadn’t heard since she’d lived in Winterfell. “It were definitely three.”

“Yes,” Tyrion agreed. “I suppose it must have been.”

Neither Cub nor Dayne thought much of the cold soup – Cub was up again with his drill, and Dayne looked at his mother with pleading eyes.

She nodded at him – she and Jaime had always raised their boys to try food, but never forced them to eat anything they genuinely didn’t like. Brienne couldn’t say she was too keen on this herself and to be honest, a meal like this with so many courses was far too much for the boys’ appetites and concentration span.

“Do you read the papers, Brienne?” Tyrion asked then.

Brienne looked to Jaime. Jaime ate his soup. “I – well … not much,” she had to admit. “I’ve always been quite … busy, really.”

It was true – her security job and her gym time in Winterfell had always filled her schedule, and more recently, she’d had Jaime, the boys, her volunteering with the fire brigade … and of course more gym time. Sitting down to read a newspaper hadn’t really figured much.

Tyrion grinned. “So … did you even know who Jaime was when you met him?”

“Not really. I’d heard his name. I knew he was a violinist, but … no real specifics.”

“Not your type of music?”

Jaime laughed. “Brienne was more into The Stormboys!”

Brienne laughed, too, though she didn’t really think that was funny.

“Well, I hope you’ve educated your tastes in recent years,” Tyrion grinned. “It must be quite something to go from a shopping centre to being serenaded by The Divine Lannister.”

Brienne looked to Jaime. Jaime looked away.

“Jaime doesn’t play any more,” she told Tyrion. Passed her soup bowl to the servants as they cleared this course from the table.

“What?” Tyrion spluttered. He looked between them in utter shock – Brienne might as well have announced she was from another planet. “You mean … he doesn’t play for you? He’s never played for you?”

“I would never ask him to,” she clarified. “I … he … he didn’t want –”

“We’ve been busy having babies,” Jaime interrupted. “You know how it is.”

“I’ve heard recordings,” Brienne said. “Of course.”

“Well, what – what about the boys?” Tyrion asked.

The servants came in then with a fish course – some sort of white fish with crispy skin in a sauce with capers. Jaime looked into his bowl; he looked shrunken beneath his brother’s scrutiny. Brienne didn’t understand.

“Jaime doesn’t play any more,” she said again. “Not for me, not for the boys. Not at all.”

“No,” said Tyrion with a wave of his hand. “Do the boys play?”

“The violin?!” asked Brienne.

“Yes!”

“No! Of course not. Why –”

“Because they are Jaime Lannister’s sons!” Tyrion exclaimed. He looked nothing less than horrified. “Don’t you think they might have inherited his talent?”

Brienne opened her mouth. Closed it again. Looked to Jaime. Jaime concentrated on cutting his fish.

“I wouldn’t put my children through what Jaime went through as a child,” Brienne said. “I want them to have a normal life.”

“Why?!”

“Because Jaime never went to a birthday party or had a sleepover, because he grew up in a conservatory away from his family, practising eight hours a day by the time he was Dayne’s age.”

“But look what he got from it! Look what he gave to the world. Jaime’s recordings are considered definitive, his interpretations genius. What a legacy he’s left the world, and you’d have him changing nappies and picking up dog shit? You’d have his sons deny themselves greatness … for birthday parties? For sleepovers?”

“This isn’t me!” Brienne protested. “We both wanted –”

“Jaime doesn’t know what he wants. He was diagnosed with severe PTSD after the earthquake, or did you not know that, either?”

Brienne didn’t; they had talked about the earthquake maybe twice in five years. She had never pushed her husband on the subject – it was something in his past. Something he found upsetting. Why would she torture him by asking him questions about it?

She drank her wine. Something stung her eyes.

Tyrion put his fish fork down. “Brienne?” he asked.

“What?”

“Do you know what Jaime said on the phone to me two nights ago? When he called to ask if he could come home?”

“Tyrion …” said Jaime. There was a warning tone to his voice, but it was weak.

“No!” Tyrion cried. “Is she your wife or isn’t she?”

“Of course she is.”

“Then don’t you think she deserves your honesty? To know why you’re here?”

“Why are we here?” Brienne asked. She looked between her husband and his brother.

Jaime sighed. “Did you have to do this?” he asked Tyrion.

“Why are we here, Jaime?” Brienne demanded. She tried never to raise her voice in front of the boys, but she couldn’t help it, this time. “What did you say on the phone?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jaime said. “I was having a bad time. Things got on top of me, with all the stuff in the papers, and then … we argued about having another baby, and – I was in a bad place.”

“Were you leaving us?” Brienne asked. Her voice was small now. “Did you tell your brother you were leaving us?”

“No! No, of course not. I just needed –”

“What? What did you need?”

“I needed to know who I _am_. I tried so hard to be Jaime O’Tarth for so long. I tried so hard to be a good husband and a good father …”

“You are a good husband and father. You always have been.”

“Yes, but –”

“But _what_?”

“But it didn’t matter. Not one bit. It didn’t actually protect us from everything I hated about my life as The Divine Lannister.”

“You think that matters to me? To Dayne or Cub? You think we mind?”

“I don’t think you understand well enough to mind.”

“So what were you doing, then? Will you please just tell me? What did you say to Tyrion on the phone that night?”

Jaime closed his eyes. His single fist clenched on the tabletop. “I asked him to contact Arthur Dayne. I wanted to work on my playing. To see if there was any chance I could still be who I used to be.”

“That’s why you were taking Cersei. Not as a distraction for photographers at all.”

Jaime nodded. “Yes. I …”

“Oh,” Brienne said. She swallowed. “And you... You didn’t feel as though you could tell me that? You didn’t feel like I would understand?”

“I – I don’t know. It was …” He trailed off, making vague gestures with his hand.

Everyone was looking at her. Even Dayne. Even Cub. Her face was hot; her throat was tight.

She wanted to get up and leave. But she remembered earlier, hearing that explosion of laughter when she had closed the door on Tyrion and his friends. She wasn’t going to give that smirking, arrogant arsehole the satisfaction of knowing he had upset her.

She nodded, instead. “All right, well. That’s fine,” she lied. “If that’s what you want, then …”

She went back to her fish course. Chewed it with a trembling mouth, swallowed it with great difficulty.

“Brienne?” asked Jaime.

She forced a smile. Carried on eating.

“Mummy, are you okay?” Dayne whispered from her side when the main course was served.

“Of course,” she smiled, squeezing his little hand.

She watched Jaime, a new Jaime, maybe the old Jaime, maybe a Jaime she could never understand, as he tackled his serving of wood pigeon, using his knife to cut one of the legs off in a single chop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry it's been a couple of weeks since the last chapter - I took a break after finishing Us Without Each Other so I could play the new WoW expansion and recharge a bit before writing the new story. 
> 
> Big thanks to all the lovely people who read and kudosed and commented on the last chapter - I always love to hear your thoughts and I hope you enjoyed this one despite a bit of argy-bargy between Tyrion and Brienne. 
> 
> If you're enjoying this story and would perhaps like updates and teasers, then please consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


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